"Why didn't you help me?"
by Zoe2
Summary: Daniel thinks back over Sam's death and his own guilt. So it's Daniel's POV.


Title: "Why didn't you help me?"  
  
Author: Zoe Hands  
  
E-Mail: zoejoyvic@hotmail.com  
  
Category: General  
  
Rating: PG. Character death(there's a surprise!).  
  
Summary: Daniel thinks back about the day Sam was killed. So it's Daniel's POV. Set five years in the future.  
  
Disclaimer: I don't own Stargate SG-1. No infringement of copyright was intended and I received no monetary reward for writing this. The story-line and any subsequent characters or technology belongs to the author.  
  
Author's notes: I know that the tense and descriptions sometimes change, but this is intentional. I have used the changes of her to you in the same paragraph to show confusion of thought, to blur reality with recollection and vice-versa (it's also a good way to excuse any technical errors - bonus! hehe).  
  
"Why didn't you help me?".  
  
I have this memory and it eats me up inside. It's as vivid today as when it happened five years ago, nothing has faded, the demons remain, playing on my conscience, playing on my mind. I vowed never to give substance to it, never to speak it, never to hear it, never to smell and never to feel it, but I see it all the time. I guess you could call it venting but I had to write it down, I had to let the demons out to play.  
The vision goes with blackened clouds and heavy thunderous rain, and when I remember it I see her tired feet running over sodden ground. But in actuality the suns shined bright on the day it happened, the ground was vibrant and fresh with green vines and thick bladed grass. In fact the vegetation was so full I sometimes wonder how I managed to see and hear what went on, but I did: her body plunging through the thicket, birds fluttering violently from their nests, a frantic scurrying through the leaves and broken branches as animals rushed from their dwellings. The noise was frenzied, the sound waves crested in panic.  
From time to time she speaks to me. I feel her breath against my face, faint but palpable. Sometimes she comes to me with a question: Why didn't you help me?. That question plagues me. It plagues all of us who were there, none less than Jack.  
We returned to P3X225 yesterday, not just to commemorate but to comfront. I thought the day would have seen me do battle with my morality, but I watched Jack engage his demons instead, after all they ran deeper than mine. His eyes were fixed on the spot where she finally fell, his vision grasping every strand of grass, every stone and every grain of dirt as if clinging to them for support. His face took on that odd stillness that always came over it when he thought about her and that day. "Hard to believe," he said turning to me.  
I nodded silently, unable to add anything further, unable, despite all these many years, to relieve the burden of his doubt, offer him those words which I knew would have set him free. I could think them 'It wasn't your fault', I even tried to make myself believe them, but I knew to accept them and to go even further and offer them to Jack would have been giving myself and him a brazen lie of wantant hope.  
In my mind I saw Sam's body as Jack had seen it, lying facedown on the forest floor, her flaxen hair moving slightly in the cool breeze that had danced around us, a single arm reaching out towards where we had stood when she had fallen. The lay of her arm had spoke volumes, unable to speak herself any more she used her outstretched hand to ask for help. Her palm though was empty, unfulfilled in its grasping plea .   
"I can't imagine why it happened" Jack said softly, though not exactly to himself. Once again his eyes shot over to me. "Can you, Daniel?"  
His eyes were warm but motionless as they stared at me, and I knew that I had to answer quickly in order to deflect all those other questions that had taunted him throughout the years, colouring his view of life, darkening its gifts and amplifying its traumas.  
"Fate" I said as unsatisfied in my answer as he was.  
Jack continued to watch me steadily, analysing me to see if I carried the same guilt that afflicted him so convincingly. I did, but I didn't want him to know it, it would only perpetuate his own by confirming that I too thought the blame lay with us. Instead I side stepped his view, gauging instead the cage of trees that surrounded us. The clearing in which we stood was closed and devoid of saviour, forlorn and lacking hope. The glade housed a world of hate where nothing towered above us but the trees and the clouds, nor loomed in distances more vast than those that separated us from the rest of the humanity. I sometimes see her not as she was that day, a frightened woman running desperately from the sudden violence of a single Denison, but as an outsider, wrongly accused and set upon by a huge, howling race. Or perhaps that is only how I wish to view it, a single victim, but a world of blame. I held too much contempt, too much guilt and too much condemnation for one inhabitant.  
Before she ran, before she craved help and before she died, I remember speaking to her. She wore that insatiable smile. It's the absence of that smile that most haunts me now, and each time I recall it, I remember how happy she appeared even on a routine mission, how she was trusting and guarding of her friends and team mates, and then, at that moment, at the moment of her destruction, all the trust and belonging she had come to feel during the previous four years we all had spent together exploded before her eyes as she died alone, yet surrounded by friends.  
Within an instant, she was gone.  
I have spent so long trying to surpress these emotions, thoughts, questions and memories, and now, I let then flood into my conscious mind, giving them form and energy in the shape of my own misgivings.   
It is early afternoon and outside a breeze rustles its was through the grass of my front yard. Across the way, a young girl is playing. I watch her as she takes a dead flower and blows it's skeletal remains into the shimmering air, and suddenly in my mind I see you, that girl she has your smile.   
I see you in life, in my mind and in my dreams. Your arm waves at me and at Jack who stands next to me. You smile, as if to reassure us that you are safe from harm as you turn away to walk through the forest in search of something to occupy your mind. You disappear beyond the treeline.  
Sometimes the dream ends there, with my last sight of you wearing that smile that forever lingers on your lips. This dream I crave for, it stops whilst you are alive and I can let my imagination fill in the ending of my choice. But, at other times the dream goes on irrevocably, gaining momentum, gaining power, feeding off my regrets. Step by step, right until the moment when I hear your body drop, the crash muffled by the dense undergrowth, your legs tangled in the vines, your faced marked and bleeding from where the low-hung branches whipped your face mercilessly. You run desperately towards me, you are shouting. "Help". I hear you. Your voice echoes around my empty soul that has become baron with regret. You were almost clear of the trees when you fell. You were almost safe. I remember your face pushed hard against the ground. You had hit your head when you fell and you were dazed. I saw a shadow fall over you, it grew in opaqueness and size as it got closer. It was then that you glanced at me. Your eyes screaming for help. Your pupils were flared wide making them appear dark. Your last frightened glare turned to a questioning appeal: "Why didn't you help me?".  
The lines between dream, memory and reality have become blurred with your presence. I am reassured by the familiar bay window, beyond which is the street, the road straight and sure, I can hear the soothing stream that runs behind my house. All that lies outside of me is clean, crisp and ordered. Then I see your face and I know I'm still dreaming. I can still look out the window, walk down the street, run my hand through the crystal water. Then you appear and the water turns murky, the road becomes forlorn and the window shattered. The world draws in, crowding me everytime I relive that day. But I relive it anyway, my mood clouds over, a storm is brewing. I have become confused over the years. I don't even know who this letter is to: myself or you. I'm not sure who it is about more, you or me. Sam I see you, I live your last moments. You walk my street, you throw pebbles in the stream, I see your reflection in my window. I can see you now as I write this. Not as the body lying tangled in the vines, but as you were while you were still alive, young and vibrant, full of wonder and ennobled. You are reading this as I write it. You are waiting for your answer. "Why didn't you help me?". The answer is something that has evaded me for a long time.   
I watched. I could have helped. Jack could have helped. Teal'c tried too. I guess I saw you in so much need, I saw your death imminent and I stood watching. Unbelieving. I didn't react. I couldn't react. Your scream tore through me and I listened. I saw you die and I felt your loss. Why didn't I help you? - God Sam, the truth is I don't know, and I guess as long as I don't know you will remain with me waiting for your answer.  
  



End file.
